I have been thinking lately about trying to do a project on Instax. Something that could be my first proper photography project, with a consistent theme throughout. I think I may have discovered what I want to do in that sense whilst at Belsay. A tenebrism frame of extreme window light contrast. I’ll see how that develops, but for now, watch this space.

Belsay is located at roughly ///calculate.photo.hopeless on what3words. I had to go with the option that said my photos were hopeless…

Worst Things First

The Doorway

With this image I was trying to expose for the outside, and have light coming through the doorway fading to darkness around the edge of the frame. I may have overestimated the dynamic range of the instax, as a result its rather underexposed… A complete miss, but hopefully the only one from this trip.

OK Images

The below selection of images are the ones that I think are OK. The first three probably are the closest to being in the favourites section. The first I had intended to be a stop brighter, but someone was about to walk into the shot so I rushed it and set it wrong. The second I was laid down and couldn’t see the focusing window, I was trying to focus on the snowdrops. Some of the images in this section I did retake and get better, such as the castle and the croquet/bowling hut.

Favourites from the day

Window Light

I think 5.6 is probably too wide an aperture. The first shutter is sharp enough, but then the rest of the image is a bit soft. I don’t think I could have guaranteed being stable enough if I’d stopped down. I doubt English Heritage would appreciate me getting a tripod out in the middle of the hall, so I reckon I could take a better version of this on a bright day in summer, rather than on a winters afternoon. Still, I like the concept, I like the contrast between the lights and darks, and I like the colours in the image. This may be the start of a project…

Columns

I need to hold my hands up with this one. When I metered and saw the shutter speed I did not expect this one to come out. Handholding at 1/8 I thought it would be a blurry mess. I did lean into a pillar for stability, but I think a lot of this image coming out has to do with luck! The (-) written on image shows that the camera thinks it was going to underexpose, but I think the exposure is on point for the conditions in the hall.

Wallpaper

Taken in the upstairs of the hall. I knew when I entered one of the rooms that I wanted to fill the frame with one of the wallpaper textures. I was torn between taking the image where the wallpaper was unbroken, or along the edge with a rip. I wish I’d taken both. I didn’t expect to like this as much as I do when I had the concept in mind.

Castle

I had another version of this image above in the ‘OK’ section. When I’d taken the first one I realised that the light was about to change as we started walking away, so I went back to the spot I’d originally shot from. I decided to set it to -1 on auto to try and emphasise the way the light was hitting the castle. I think its a touch dark, but its a nice pay off to get more colour and texture in the sky, so ultimately it ends up being one of the days favourites.

Pagoda

Is pagoda even the right word? I think this works better than the previous version of the image in the ‘OK’ section. As with the castle abovem, the light was changeable and is better here than the previous image. It also benefits from being closer to the subject. I’m going to miss light like this as we leave winter and head into spring/summer. The littles ones are just too young still to get summer sunsets in my pictures.

Hall Corner

I used auto for this image, but the camera told me I needed the ND2, which I didn’t use, making it one stop overexposed by the internal meter. I think not using the ND was the right call. I assume the reflected light from the wall was throwing it off. I quite like the realness in the image provided by the spread issue on the left.

If you would like to see more of my landscape work, moving forward most of the images will be here in blog format, but I will notify of new entries on my Instagram page for landscapes - @photog.righ

If you are interested in following my portrait and product work, links to my instagram and twitter for those accounts are just below at the bottom of this page